Name:Dean lawrence
Age:Nearly 37
Years Skating:23 ish years
Current set up:Olde board,big indys,big spifires,and a home made lost art sticker
Texas Plant.
1. How did you get into skateboarding and what was your first board?
Ermmmmm! i guess just from being a street rat on the estate really,all my pals had bmxs, then when they started trying be the local hooleys i went my own way,got an olde variflex off my mate learnt to ollie,the rest was history,i didn’t really know anyone who lived near me that skated but for some reason i just wanted to skate all the time,it felt so rad pushing round the streets.
My first pro set up i think was a Dressen,trackers or gullwings with bullet wheels.
2. Growing up on the Southcoast, do you feel the spots shaped the skaters and styles differently to others across the UK?
You skated what you could ,we where that generation that had mini and vert ramps, crusty old parks as well as a lot of street,and crusty street banks,so i guess your town or county would shape you whether you had a choice or not you just pushed around and found shit skated it for an hour or so and on to the next spot,most skaters got a flavour for what they would become early on,whether you where an all street shredder or park head.
Frontside Tail Block.
3. What is the dumbest thing you have ever done?
Doing silly amounts of drugs in the early mid nineties and fulling asleep at the wheel of battered old fiesta nearly every time i drove back from a rave,im fucking lucky to be alive.
4. Do you have a 1 trick nemesis that no matter how hard you try it just isn’t happening?
hahahahah,at my age all tricks are becoming a nemesis,but still probaly the front shove, and any flip,practice makes perfect
Frontside bean plant.
5. Biggest skateboader influences?
Well for me its places and skaters,isle of wight was so fucking rad when i first started skating with mikey p every one was fucking rad, it made me try even more not to much effect though!then New York the whole east coast thing was like real skating to me real dirty spots rad lines dope skaters,and now being a park troll its Oregon,as skaters go mostly freinds ive grown up with and still skate with now,blond,beard,rich,keys, tibbz,mac n ash, pro skaters there’s a fair few,from then till now Dressen,Danny sargent,tom knox,jovantoe turner,rick howard,mike carroll,EMB cats,SF,Cardiel,Stranger,Anit hero for life,Hewitt,childress,the gut peabody,and all that shredd!
6. Having been around for so long and having seen so many come and go from skateboarding, how do you think you have managed to keep progressing?
Just trying to keep it fresh really keep learning,trying to face the trick fear on regular bases,and don’t listen to others waffling on about trick tips,just enjoy yourself and keep it real there’s no rules!
5050 Pull In.
7. Any words of wisdom for the future generations from an Olde head?
work hard play hard,and learn to bake cakes cause there real good!
Dean’s friend Ade added a few more questions.
1.Dean likes his concrete, top 7 parks?
1 Chi park
2. Newbird
3. Shoreham bowl
4. Petersfield bowl
5. Haslemere
6. Bournemouth park
7.Burnside
Top 7 Gary Numam songs?
All trax from the Replicas album
Top 7 Chitty/Pagham/Bognor facts?
Bognor, once was a smuggling village, also holds the birdman rally and the butlins holiday resort (shit hole). Chitty, very old Roman Norman and Anglo Saxon history, Chi has a road called Stane street which connects to London built by the Roman, we have some of the best countryside including Kingly Vale an ancient forest full of burial mounds, on the summit of Bow Hill the tombs are known as the Devils Humps.
